"Answer the door!" Giles yelled in the direction of the broadcast booth door, since he couldn't see who was next to it anymore. He snatched the telephone out of Bubbles' hands. "Who is the DJ around here?" he glowered at her.
"You!" she said perkily.
"This is the DJ's line. Who gets to answer it?"
She shuffled a foot contritely.
Giles picked the telephone receiver off its hook and hit the line number. "Rupert Giles and the Retro 70's Rock and Roll Show," he announced.
"Forget that, you faggot," a deep Boston-tinged male voice growled. "Put Bubbles on."
A yelling match had erupted at the door. Giles threw the telephone back to Bubbles and got up to curb the disturbance.
Anya was standing in the doorway glaring daggers at Xander, who was struggling to disengage from a Blossomy clinch. The pink demon groupie was making derisive faces at the other girl.
"-- not my fault!" Xander was trying to explain.
Anya was dressed in a 'Sandwich Titan' cap and was carrying several delivery bags. "Did I say you could date other demons?!" she yelled at Xander. A tear rolled unheeded down her cheek.
"Is that free food?" Giles asked the young woman.
Anya looked at him as if he'd just sprouted antlers.
"Blossom, be a luv and find me a good 1970's CD to play? Something by an artist whose surname doesn't begin with 'Jackson'?" Giles prompted the pink groupie.
Her face lit up. "Yes!" She cheerfully propelled Xander into Anya's arms and elbowed her way to the DJ's chair.
"You may regret that," Oz told him.
"I have many regrets." Giles plucked one of the bags from Anya's hands, which were clutched at Xander's back now. "Hula is simply the latest in a line of them. At this point, free food will make me happy."
"Are any of those bags marked prosciutto?" Oz asked.
Since Anya was currently smooching Xander and in an otherwise oblivious state, Giles bent to examine the bags in her hands. He harvested one of the meals and handed it to Oz.
"Chicken salad?" Willow prompted.
Giles sent another bag her way.
Willow reached for it and nearly got Lili's elbow up her nose. "Ow," she complained. "There are too many people -- not to mention demons -- in here."
Giles sighed as he unwrapped his sandwich. "Maybe we should move the show out of the broadcast booth and let the unwashed masses have it."
"Hey!" Bubbles' blonde head popped up from the crush. "I smell tuna."
"Somewhere in that bunch." Willow gestured with sandwich-filled hands at Anya's packages.
"Got an idea," Oz said, and pulled all the paper bags from Anya's hands. "Free food up in the front office!" he shouted above the din of voices and Three Dog Night's "Old Fashioned Love Song", and he made for the door.
Giles and Willow barely got out of the way in time to keep from being trampled. "That worked nicely," Giles commented to Willow as they squooshed against the wall together. "We'd best lock the door, however. Those sandwiches aren't going to last long."
"No lock on the door, Rupert," Lili said. He, Lili, and Willow were the only ones left in the broadcast booth. "Trent made us remove it when one of the student djs decided to protest the cancellation of 'Brimstone' by playing 'The Devil Within' non-stop for 72 hours."
"Well, go out and make sure they stay happy where they are." Giles put down his half-eaten sandwich and shoved both women out the door. "Get on the telephone and order more free food and tell Oz to turn up the sound system."
"Hey!" Willow yelled at him. "Who made you the boss? Talk about letting a little fame go to your he --" He slammed the door in her face, took a deep breath, and turned to the CD shelves. A quick scan of them reinforced his earlier impression that he didn't have much to work with here, and -- damn -- his LP case was out with the crowd. He'd have to brave the ruckus outside to fetch it. Grabbing a copy of Kiss's Hotter Than Hell he jumped to the soundboard just as the track of Three Dog Night was finishing.
The microphone switch was on. Giles glared at it as if that would be sufficient to turn back time and turn it off.
"All right then," he said to whatever audience he still had left. "Obviously this is a plot to turn my well-planned homage to the best of 70's rock and roll into a theatre of the absurd. I can rise above this. This next selection is from some Kiss album -- does it really matter which one -- during which I am going to go kick some asses and retake control of my show." He taped down the microphone switch to off, armed himself with the baseball bat, and headed back out into the fray.
The number of people in the outer office had doubled during his brief absence. Giles blinked, rubbed at his eyes, then fished his glasses out of his coat pocket. They didn't help.
"Hey, G-Man!" Devon, still lashed to his chair, called out cheerfully. "Check it out! Party! This here is my man Joey. Joey and his buds are making a movie here tonight, and they want the Dingoes to do a track for it!"
A skinny young man dressed all in black and sporting a straggly goatee smiled at Giles and thrust his hand out. "Joey Mandecker. I make movies."
"I remember," Giles said, unimpressed.
Joey's face fell. "Super! Yes, you're the Twentieth Century Fox man I met last year at the Mastroianni anniversary party --"
"It was two years ago, at your The Last Reel Cinema film retrospective. And I do not work for Twentieth Century Fox," Giles said. "Would you please get all of these people out of my studio?"
"Oh! Oh!" Joey jabbed a finger at him. "The Last Reel Cinema Film Retrospective! Super! You were there with that lovely art gallery director, yes? Joyce -- Winters? Autumns? Something seasonal, anyway --" he turned to Devon. "You should have seen the reviews I received for that screening. Beyond belief, the reviewers were bowled over."
"Major!" Devon said. "Hey Oz!" he yelled at his fellow musician. "Motion picture gig! Super dooper, huh?"
"Super dooper," Oz agreed. "Devon man, pay attention. What do you think of when I say the word 'pineapple'?"
"Huh?" Devon blinked at him.
"Good enough." Oz started to untie him. "He's got a short attention span," he said to Giles.
"I was not at the film retrospective with Mrs. Summers," Giles insisted. "In point of fact I was there with a well known Italian film director . . ." Nobody, however, was paying any attention to him. He tucked the bat under one arm, drew off a plastic cup of beer from a keg that had been set up on the desk, and went back to his broadcast booth.
During his absence the booth had been reinfested with demon groupies and several film students.
"Wow!" one of the film students was saying as he twiddled with the soundboard controls. Outside the office speakers boomed. "It's like, a movie! 'Play Misty for Me', dude."
"I don't see the soundtrack here, dude," another film student said as he pulled disks from the shelves and heaped them into the potted palm that squatted miserably next to the door. "How about 'Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head'? That's watery."
Giles parked his beer by the door, then grabbed the film student by the scruff of the neck and yanked him out from the disc library. Disc boxes fell about them in a rackety clatter. He booted the boy out the door with a hard kick to the ass, then rounded on the soundboard fiddler with the baseball bat at ready.
"Hey man!" the student protested. "You know you shouldn't pick that thing up when you don't intend to use it."
Giles eyed him up and down, deciding on an appropriate target.
The student hastily backed away. "Hey dude, chill! We're going!" He tangled with his buddy at the doorway, and they fell outside in a heap.
"The G-Man is fun!" Buttercup chirped from her perch atop his desk. She'd torn the duct tape from the microphone and was holding it up the better to catch the proceedings.
"He's no wussy!" Blossom agreed from her seat beside her sister groupie. She applauded wildly.
"You've earned our slavish devotions!" Bubbles chirped and parked herself next to Blossom. "All you have to do, Mr. Giles, is use us."
Giles eyed the three demonesses -- green-clad, emerald- eyed Buttercup with her razor-sharp, dark-as-night pageboy hair; redhead violet-eyed Blossom in sizzling pink; and too- cute-for-words blonde-haired, blue-eyed Bubbles in blue -- and he had a flash of omnipotence. They were powerful, beautiful, devoted, and very naughty. With them behind him, there was nothing he couldn't accomplish, no word of his that would go unheeded.
"Very well," he finally acquiesced, eyeing each of them in turn, measuring them. They squirmed. He took the microphone from Buttercup and flipped it decisively off. "First of all: Don't call me G-Man. Secondly: You can start by breaking up the party out in the office and getting everyone to go home --"
"Oh we can't do that." Blossom was examining her fingernails with a scowl.
"What?" Giles said, startled.
Buttercup grabbed him and scooted him back down into his chair. "Things are just starting to get fun. You stay and do the show, and we'll host." She straddled his lap and threw her arms around his neck.
Out of the corner of his eye, Giles spotted Bubbles snaking a delicate little hand out at his Gotterdamonrung book. "Oh no you don't," he growled and unceremoniously grabbed a handful of frazzly red hair to yank Blossom to one side so he could snatch the book away.
Bubbles glared at him. Blossom squirmed indignantly and bit into his forearm. She didn't break the leather of his jacket, but it hurt like the devil. He latched onto her waist with his free arm and struggled to his feet. "Ouch! Is this the way you treat all your idols?"
"Yep!" Buttercup had grabbed him around the neck and was throttling him in the crook of one elbow as she snatched at the book that he was trying to hold out of her reach.
"Lemme, lemme!" Bubbles was dancing excitedly around them, jumping up to snatch at the book.
He was tall enough to evade her, but that only gave him the advantage for a moment. He felt a sharp pain in one leg as Buttercup tried to climb him for it. "Bloody hell!" he yelled at her.
The door to the broadcast booth swung open. "Rupert, dead air!" Lili shouted.
"I'm indisposed," Giles said. "Would you --?"
"Damn right, I will." She grabbed the baseball bat off the floor.
Bubbles rounded on Lili, sparks fluttering from her eyes, hair and fingertips. "Go 'way!" she screamed.
"Lili, just put a new track on?" Giles pleaded.
"And let these bimbos crawl all over my boyfriend?" Lili bristled. "As if."
"It's time for roast bitch!" Bubbles giggled at her. Dozens of tiny balls of blue fire went spinning from her fingers as she danced around Giles in a mock Indian war dance.
"All I'm asking," Giles said, "is that one time tonight somebody does what I tell him to. Is that bloody too much to ask?"
"Oh all right." Lili swatted at her smoking shirt. "What should I play?"
"Anything that's not Michael Jackson, or hula," he said desperately.
Lili went to the shelves and reached for a disc.
"And no more Dingoes, or The Partridge Family!" Giles stomped on Buttercup's foot, and the demoness let out a squeal. "And bugger all to Ohio Express as well!" He grabbed Blossom and pitched her out the door.
"Girl bands," Lili said with satisfaction and put a CD on the player. She grabbed the microphone. "Hey, Rupert, you've gotta remember to turn the microphone off, okay?" She turned her attention to the audience. "This is the Rupert Giles' Retro '70s Show. I'm Lili, the G-Man's main squeeze, and we're going to have a little girl action here, with The Tom Tom Club's "The Genius of Love", 'cause that's our man, girls. I'll be in his class any day any way." She turned the mike off. "How's that?"
"Who the hell are The Tom Tom Club?" he retorted, holding his book over his head while fending a spitting Bubbles off.
"Oh." Lili looked chagrined. "Wrong decade, I guess. But! They're pan-generational!" She picked up the baseball bat again. "Hey, chiquita, there's room in this class for just one."
Bubbles turned, grinned, and pulled a flashing scimitar from behind her back. "'kay! I'll fight you for him." She slashed at Lili and lopped off the top of the bat.
Lili looked at the truncated bat. "I can share. Where the heck were you keeping that thing?"
Giles yanked the scimitar out of Bubbles' hand. She looked at him with startled rabbity eyes. "No scimitars in the broadcast booth," he said. "Do I have to state the obvious?"
"'kay," said Bubbles in a whispery voice.
"Hey Giles!" Xander opened the door and hit Bubbles in the rump with it. "Oops, sorry!"
"You can run into my rear end any time," Blossom assured him as she came up behind him. Her hair was smoking slightly from some stray blue sparks. Xander stared at her, mesmerized.
"Hey hey hey!" Anya shoved her way inside to latch onto Xander. "Aren't there laws against laying lascivious eyes on somebody else's property? Back in my day you'd get your eyes gouged out with hot --"
"Get a life," Blossom told her. "You has-been. There oughta be laws against women with nothing to do with themselves but hang with their guys."
Anya glared.
"Party's in here, dudes!" Devon yelled over his shoulder as he edged inside.
Giles shoved him back. "No more civilians in the broadcast booth!"
Devon held up a six-pack of bottled lager. Giles yanked him inside. "Oz!" he shouted out the door. A familiar tow- head bobbed briefly over the heads of the taller film students -- and of the heads of a swarm of yuppie-punk types who had invaded the radio station office in his brief absence. The office desk had been shoved to one side of the room, creating an impromptu dance floor. Someone had hung a glitterball from the overhead lights.
Giles grabbed a random CD from the shelves, threw it on the player, then headed out the door.
The dancers yielded with reasonable alacrity to his brandished scimitar. He only had to hit two of them with the flat of the blade to get through to Oz. "I thought you were getting things under control out here!" he yelled at the young musician over The Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive".
Oz shrugged. "Free food," he mouthed back, as if that explained everything. Which, Giles supposed, it did.
A sudden ruckus by the door to the broadcast booth was followed by some bouncing balls of pink fire that ricochetted off the glitterball to bounce against the office walls with spectacular sprays of violet sparks. The dancers stopped in their gyrations to applaud and beat out the odd smoldering fire.
Giles got into Oz's face to insure that the young man heard him straight. "Find Willow and go back to my flat. Get a volume entitled Ausgehen. It's shelved on top of the fridge."
Oz looked dubiously over at Willow, who was sitting on the office desk, which had been pushed to one side. She was munching on popcorn and had the look of horrified fascination of a foreign observer of a native bacchanal.
The disco beat ended, and there was an echoing silence. Everyone in the room turned to look expectantly at Giles.
"Damn!" he muttered, and handed Oz the scimitar. He dashed back to the booth, the crowd parting for him with what would have been gratifying diffidence if he'd been able to stop to savor it. Lili thrust the microphone into his hand as he skidded into the booth.
"This is Rupert Giles and the Retro 70's Rock and Roll Show," he panted into the mike. "And that sound in the background is not a party in progress. Do not come down to the station; there is no free food here. In fact, everyone should mellow out for the night now, don't you think? Let's start with 'Truckin', The Grateful Dead."
"Oops," said Lili. "I don't think you should use the words 'free food' and 'Grateful Dead' in the same sentence."
He looked at her in annoyance. "I did tell them to mellow out."
Lili made a face, then turned thoughtful. She tugged him out of his seat. "The Dead are on. Turn the player to continuous play -- nobody will notice. We can go and smooch somewhere for a while."
Giles dug in his heels. "This is my show, and I will not relinquish control of it to the forces of chaos," he insisted. "For once this year I am going to be master of my fate, the captain of my vessel. Even if the vessel is a fourth-rate public radio station with a music library that looks like it has been plucked straight from the bowels of K- Tel."
"Oh come on! This is radio," Lili said. "It's all entertainment." At his uncomprehending look, she propelled him to the door and opened it to the din without. She got up on tiptoe to yell into his ear. "Talk about control! These guys are having the best fun the entire semester, and all because you've got them rocking around your little finger!"
Giles looked at her, then back out at the ongoing party. Several of the closest dancers had noticed the two djs standing there, and they started pumping their fists and chanting, "G-Man! Lili! G-Man!" He looked over at Willow, who'd been joined on the desk by Xander and Anya. Xander grinned at him, gave him a thumbs up, and joined the chant. Willow and Anya looked at him incredulously, then looked at Giles. Willow gave him a small smile and began to chant too.
Giles steeled himself and walked out to claim his LP case. The crowd made eager way for him. Hands reached out to tug at the sleeves of his jacket. The lovely demon groupies materialized on either side to shove and knee the gropers out of the way. He didn't attempt to dissuade them.
Clutching the case, he turned to glare at the crowd. "All right then!" he yelled at them over the sounds of "Truckin'". "You people listen to me, because I am Master here. First off: Take down that glitterball. What is this, a bloody discotheque?"
Several of the dancers scrambled to obey.
"Second: Kick open those doors and put the speakers out into the hallway. There's not enough room to swing a bat in here."
Several more partiers peeled off to obey.
"Third: We're now officially throwing a party. If anyone breaks anything my girls here have my go-ahead to kick your asses."
The demon groupies beamed. Buttercup cracked her knuckles in a shower of green sparks.
The crowd went wild. "G-Man! G-Man!" they started again.
"Fourth:" Giles yelled, and they all instantly quieted. "Don't call me that!"
"Ah, come on," Lili protested. She clung to his elbow, making faces at the groupie brigade. "It's a great air name."
Xander was grinning at him from his perch on top of the cabinet.
"Damnation," Giles said. The song was in its last seconds. "Don't you think you've had the last word on this!" he yelled at Xander.
He stormed back into the booth, records tucked protectively against his chest. "So they'll play step and fetchit for the G-Man, will they?" he muttered to himself as he slid the case onto the desk, then turned to yank Prince's 1999 from the station's shelves. "Twenty years I'm Rupert Giles, Watcher, sacrifice my life to the Sacred Duty. Get no respect for it, not from my so-called colleagues, not from my family, not even from my Slayer. My life isn't my own, up all hours seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, researching every dusty mouldering nook and cranny of demon lore, and I can't even get them to save me a jelly doughnut. One night spinning the vinyl and suddenly I've got them jumping around like pyrotechnic grasshoppers doing my bidding."
He viciously ripped the duct tape from the microphone. "It's eleven o'clock now, you ponces," he snarled at the world at large. "Are you safe at home where you should be, or are you all staggering about Sunnydale tonight like poster children for Darwinism in action?"
"Darwin! Darwin!" the rowdy crowd outside the broadcast booth chanted.
"You hear that?" Giles held the microphone up briefly towards the open door. "Cold pizza, three keggers of bad American beer, and a glitterball. That's what's called a party these days." He put an acid sneer in his voice. "You Americans can't even put a proper blow out together. Don't come down here, people. You'll only appear more pathetic than you are. As a matter of fact, this next should be right up your various dismal allies."
That said, he flipped Prince's "1999" on.